Creepy Crawleys

We have this area between our garage and house, we call it a breezeway.  It goes straight through from the driveway to the backyard.  It's got siding, a slanted linoleum floor, a sweet old-school sink, and is prone to worms after it rains (yup. Classy).  It's actually a good place to store or bikes and stroller.  It also has these louvered windows that I've never seen before in any other home.  If you, too, are unfamiliar with louvered windows, they are heavy metal contraptions that have a bunch of glass slats that crank open like blinds, and have a screen behind them.

The breezeway in the middle there with the screen door.

Have you ever had an area of your home that you know is messy but after walking past it several times a day for a year, you just look past the mess? Well that was the louvered windows for me.  I knew they were dirty and filed with spider webs but in order to clean the screen a person would have to completely unscrew and remove the screens.  So I just kept walking past them every day instead.  Until last week.

Dang it's hard to photograph a dirty window.  Then again, most people wouldn't really want to. 

The scales fell from my eyes and I saw just how nasty these things had become, so I decided to finally clean them.  I unscrewed the screens and sprayed them down with a hose, and then methodically cleaned each glass slat with cleaner and paper towel (not even cloth rags, they were too nasty and bug-filled!).  Putting them back together was a wonderful sight---I think there is more light in this breezeway!

It's even harder to photograph clean windows.  Because they're clean.

Incidentally, one thing I really wanted when Dillon and I bought this house was to throw a party and have people in the backyard with the cooler of beer in the breezeway.  We experienced that at our party for the baby's baptism!!!  You all have no idea how wonderful that felt; just having our own house with all the people we love and beer coolers in the breezeway made this really feel like home. 

We really have had a major spider problem in the house this year.  Literally hundreds of leggy spiders infiltrated every space in our home.  Now, I know we aren't the tidiest people ever, particularly since a terribly needy family member was born, but I like to think we are more cleanly than that.  We've swept them up and knocked down webs and vacuumed them up only to have more spiders reappear in the same place overnight.  Literally.  So, how do you all get rid of spiders?  I remember hearing something about a herb you can put around your house that deters them---anyone with any experience care to weigh in?  Please tell me I don't have to sweep and knock and vacuum the basement every day.  Please!

Horrifying picture of the spiders. HELP ME GET RID OF THESE THINGS!